… give or take
// From the western perspective, looking on a map, Afghanistan looks like a discrete political unit, comparable to any other sovereign country like France, Canada, Mexico or Japan. Therefore, westerners often assume that the kinds of social and political institutions present in those other countries can also be built in Afghanistan, with due regard for [...]
// Continued from yesterday’s post… Conclusions and Recommendations American policymakers would be wise to heed the lessons of history. Although Muhammad Zahir Shah reigned over a stable central Afghan state for 40 years, the period was marked by limited progress for the country as a whole, and the central government depended so heavily on the [...]
// Continuing from yesterday’s post… Afghanistan: A Tough Nut to Crack However, there are deeper structural impediments standing in the way of a modern Afghan state. From the rulers of the 18th century to the Taliban in the 1990s, certain characteristics of Afghanistan have continually thwarted the efforts of centralizing forces. Like Europe, whose rivers, mountain [...]
// For the next few days, I will write an extended article on the proper way forward in Afghanistan, and the historical and sociopolitical reasoning behind it. It is adapted from a paper I wrote earlier this year, and will come in the form of several posts. It is a bit academic, and some basic [...]
// The idea of many is that Israel “has a right to exist,” which really means it “has a right to continue to exist” (since something that doesn’t exist cannot possibly have any rights, logically). On what basis? At bottom, the thinking goes, it is on the basis that the Jews constitute a distinctive ethnic [...]
